SR60x

because difference of "generally" accepted good performance is right at the $200-300 level. The exceptions are known... The pair of FIIO FT1 and FT1 Pro, Philips SHP9600, Koss's 4 on ear "headphones", Grado SR60x, Sennheiser x Drop HD6xx (sale price) or even the HD58x...🤷🏻‍♂️ There's a reason why IEM is competitive with headphones at that under $300 price point. Price to performance...IEM usually perform better than headphones

Grado SR60X They pretty much cured my Gear Acquisition Syndrome. If you can get cans that sound that great for so little money, what is the point of chasing perfection?

actually I've found koss KSC75 to be pretty great for this, I personally have two pairs, one for steamdeck/on the go and another pair for VR because they are immersive with their "sound stage", lightweight, and the ear clips keep them comfortably and securely on my ears when moving about. They are also really cheap and i'd honestly recommend just getting some anyway for use as backups or portability regardless of what you end up picking. Also one that is kinda surprising is actually grado SR60x, will definitely need EQ to fix the ridiculous tuning they have from factory but afterwards they are great for positional audio queues. In fact they used to be my main headphones for games before getting HD600. Have to be really careful with them though, the build is just not durable, they will not survive abuse. Also you have to stretch the headband out until there is just barely any clamping force on your ears, at which point I found them to be very comfortable. Otherwise they are extremely painful out of the box with too much pressure on the ears. But you know, once you fix their biggest problems they are great headphones for gaming. If gaming on windows then use "equalizer APO" and grab an automatically generated parametric EQ to harmon target from "autoeq.app". Both of the above are friendly to your budget. But my absolute favorite about them is they are way more open than HD600. What I mean by that is with either the koss or grado I can speak like normal and hear myself through my ears not just through my bones almost exactly the same as if I weren't wearing headphones at all. Whereas with the HD600 I find myself speaking louder subconsciously and I hear myself kinda like if I had a few layers of a fluffy blanket over my ears. Only really matters if I'm in a voice chat and even then it's more of a "huh that's kinda interesting"

as another glasses user I've had some offer surprisingly good comfort. Normally on-ears are a bad idea, but my grado sr60x are super comfortable *after I stretched out the headband*, you have to really stretch it out so that it applies almost no pressure to the ears, it's basically floating there, suspended only by the headband. Another is koss KSC75, again, usually having more stuff hooking to the ear is a bad idea, but I can wear these things all day long (which I have done before...). Sennheiser HD600 I was also expecting to suck, especially when I first put them on and felt how much pressure they apply. I still need to bend them a little more to relieve pressure, but even before stretching they applied more pressure near the jaw below the ear than my glasses frame. worth noting I have metal frames with wide (more like tall) but thin (1mm or less) temples, so I can get away with more pressure than frames with thick temples.

Nothing will recreate the concussion simulator that is the evo's, lol. I love them unironically but they are like a palate destroyer, it'd be like being served bananas foster right before a light salad at dinner. Also do you ACTUALLY need anc? I found it kinda unnecessary 95% of the time that I wasn't commuting to campus all 4 years (and my commute was 4 hours) What I did was get some decent anc TWS buds for commuting and stuff, and brought nice iems or headphones with me for the long study sessions in the quiet library. This is what I did for my undergrad and will be doing again in about a month for med school. This is space optimized and sound optimized. All together this is smaller and lighter than any wireless over ears and far better sounding. 1.) I use the 1more Evo TWS buds. They have good anc, good transparency, and sound great (on Android you get LDAC, but if you use iPhone you get no high quality codecs so any wireless anc bud is fine. Airpods pro/pro 2 is fine) 2.) a nice IEM with a simple dongle dac. For the $60 range, truthear zero blue 2. $100 range, simgot em6l. $200 range, apevoix Grit will best anything you've ever heard, with huge bass (all of them are bass beasts) and just overall sound better than you could imagine. I like to pair it with a hiby w3 II dac for about $40. It can be used Bluetooth or wired to get the best sound quality, even out of apple crap. Use it wired with your laptop, phone, whatever. 3.) a nice cheap wired flat earbud. The list starts and ends with the $20 nicehck EB2S. I love these things because after a while, in a quiet library, my ear canals just get tired of having something shoved in them. Headphones clamp eventually gets tiring too on an 8 hour study session. They're open, great for listening to lectures or podcasts, etc. You use your wireless buds for walking around campus (heck use the iems for that too) and when you get to your destination, pull out the iems and earbuds. The whole thing I just listed can fit into a case the size of one fist. You get a variety of sounds and the iems will utterly demolish any wireless headphone you can think of. Like, truly destroy. Even the cheap zero blue 2. If you wanna splurge though, the grits are truly godly. It also leaves you with a little budget for some open back headphones for your dorm/apartment. Some grado sr60x or some fiio ft1pro's. That's my recommendation because I've tried tons of combos of wired and wireless over ears and iems and so on. Bringing 1 TWS with anc, 1 nice iem and a pair of EB2S is the goldilocks setup for both sound and convenience. But if you want to just be the "I can only have one thing" option, the Dyson ontrac will give you the best performance all around. Godly anc and transparency, bassy but still detailed with the bass boost EQ set in the app. And if you realize how much you really don't need anc (if you aren't taking public transit and just walk around, you really have no need for anc. College campuses are not loud places) the audeze Maxwell has no anc but has colossal 90mm planar drivers that will give you a sensation of a literal WALL of sound. Stunning sounding, but a bit heavy. But they also have a nice removable mic and a usb-c 2.4ghz dongle that you can use to freely switch them between devices. I keep mine Bluetooth paired to my phone and then just plug the dongle into my pc, steam deck, tablet, laptop, or retro gaming handheld. But personally, you'll get the most real hifi performance and convenience out of my first recommendation. It's far cheaper too. And then just throw on a fun set of normal hifi headphones. I do recommend the Grado sr60x. They aren't bass cannons but the bass they do have is insanely tight and ultra clean, and they're just sparkly and delightful. I have multi-thousand dollar headphones and my little used grado sr125e's I paid $50 for on Craigslist are my most used headphones by far. They're especially good at smoothing out awful professor zoom recording audio. Oh and if you're upping your headphone game, you need to up your audio source too. (if you're using apple without apple audio products your don't get higher bitrate audio codes wirelessly. The only way to get good audio from an iPhone or MacBook is wired) if you use Spotify, you're getting compressed audio files that do not sound anywhere near as good as they can. Get a student subscription to tidal. They both have basically all the same music, but tidal has the higher quality files that keep all the nuance and things that you will notice pretty dramatically.

I wear the zones for hours and hours. My ears are pretty medium sized, don't stick out, I don't have attached earlobes and I wear a large motorcycle helmet. I'm a very average customer, maybe just on the larger edge of average. I don't know the ontrac's long term comfort, different pads, but the zone has plenty of space. But if you had big ears, that's a valid point. I find the zone cups spacious but I have experienced larger, so that's a fair point if you have big ears. So I very much disagree that the Dyson are less comfortable for most people. Opposite. Less comfortable for some. And comfort is definitely the single most important factor because if it isn't comfortable we won't wear them! But for most folks, being anyone with average American size ears or smaller, they're perfectly comfortable and spacious. And sound wise, I still stand behind my (subjective) opinion that the zone and ontrac sound better and they objectively demolish the focal in build quality, anc and transparency

New? Ft1 pro, the regular Ft1 is good but not "big ass easy to drive planar magnetic that come with both 3.5 and 4.4 cables. For about 200 But year on year, used grado sr60, 80, 125, and 225's. Used pristine 125e's are like 50 bucks everywhere and they're just a fabulous set of cans, and durable as hell.. But new, its the Ft1 pro, no contest. Or iems. Moondrop kadenz are just astonishing for 200 bucks. But the simgot em6l are also amazing for 100.

First of all, i don't think that your experience will be any better with a headphone that has a usb-c connector, since they will have the same exact type of DAC as the external ones. But you should try out the usb-C adapter by Apple. It's only 10 dollars and i have heard that it sounds just as good as audiophile adapters that cost 10 times as much. There are open back over ear headphones. I mainly use them indoors, since, i want to have as little noise as possible creeping in. When they are not playing any music, it almost feels like you are not wearing any headphones. But if you are hell bent on ear headphones, here are a few recommendations: My first pick would be Grado. They make on ear headphones that look super cool and have a very unique sound that is loved by many people. Their entry level 60x apparently sound almost identical to the more expensive 80x and 125x, so that would be a great option for the money (around 99 dollars). Then there are the Koss Porta Pro. They are one of the most legendary headphones and have received high praise for decades. They are pretty affordable at around 50 dollars (you can find them cheaper) and apparently sound pretty great for the money. The styling is a bit polarizing though, even if it is iconic.

I’d be willing to be at least half of those who dog on Grados in here have never listened to a pair. Grado sr60xs are $100. Less if on sale (which they often are). The only reason these people don’t touch Grado is a stranger on the internet made fun of them. I’m actually not a fan of Grado—they sound great but I hate the way they fit—but I at least own a pair and am speaking from experience. Buy what you want. This sub tends to be very meme-y in its suggestions.

Ahh my two favourites are definitely grado sr60x and hifiman sundaras. Idk why but that treble in the grados is just so nice for so much of my music, and I really enjoy the super light on-ear feel. Then the sundaras are absolutely my most used headphones, by far. They are always at my desk and these days even next to my bed. If I’m being honest my sundaras don’t do anything that is particularly mind-blowing but I just love the sound so much. The build quality is terrible and the cable they came with got swapped out immediately alongside the pads, but the sound is just right. Honorable mentions go to kph40s which are the single comfiest headphones ever, I usually forget in even wearing them and they sound so ridiculously good for 30$ headphones. Then to hd660s which I keep at my desk as well, and since they are so easy to drive compared to hd600 and to my sundaras, I even used them out of my phone for years.